by Riley Tune
It was sickening and sad to watch. I liked Caprongs. They were such beautiful creatures. They were only beautiful while they were young, though. When they matured, they were rather scary. Something I experienced all too well when I first was introduced to Pradeep border guards by Jolin.
As blood flowed from the body onto the Clipasie’s bare chest, he continued to chew as he squatted down slightly and jumped onto the abandoned house.
I could feel my eyes widen at the strength his legs must have contained to be able to so effortlessly leap onto a house. I wasn’t sure why this surprised me so. After all, I had just seen the beast decapitate an animal effortlessly.
He used the house as one would use a chair. He sat there, and was now using it to support him as he continued to eat his meal. He sat, legs folded, chewing and howling in rotation as the insides of the lifeless Caprong body fell on him and to the ground.
With such a large amount of them, how was I supposed to break up this pack? I could do many things but defeat a few dozen monsters wasn’t one of them. I could try to pick them off one by one, but that seemed foolish, and would take a while. I could feel my eyes darting back and forth as I tried, and failed, to come up with a plan.
Crack.
I turned quickly at the sound behind me, dagger drawn, I expected to see one of the Clipasie standing there with a confused or angry look on its face. Instead I found, nothing. I know I heard the noise, but I was still standing behind one of the abandoned homes alone.
Then I felt it. A wave of pure elation washing over me. A feeling I had felt before at the hands of Jolin but this time it was much stronger. Why was a Tongue here tonight?
As the wave continued to pulse around me, I could hear soft music playing. A steady upbeat sound that slowly flowed through the area. At that very moment, the howls of the Clipasie and their movements seemed to stop.
Then the music stopped. “It seems we have a guest tonight,” a deep voice said. The voice sounded calm and was heard easily over the silence that took over the village. I glanced from behind the house and, to my horror, found several Clipasie looking in my direction.
Along with the Clipasie, in what was clearly the middle of their circle, in front of the fire, were two people standing. The blazing fire behind them, mixed with the glow of the falling orbs, gave them an ominous presence. Only the burning fire made a sound now, and for some reason the smell in the air seemed stronger. Maybe I was just breathing heavy from the situation.
One was a man who could have been in his fifties. The other was a boy about the same age as Remy, who was holding some sort of stick, or rod, in his hand.
The deep- voiced man was dressed in random clothing. Clothing that didn’t make sense. His feet were covered by leather boots that had a shine to them and looked expensive, while his trousers had holes in them making them look old and excessively worn. His shirt on the other hand was a contrast to his trousers and boots.
It was made out of the blue shiny material that Nobles wore, yet had soil spots on it. It was as if he just gathered his clothing wherever he could. The young man with him, however, simply looked like a beggar. His clothes were all gray, and brown with dirt, and his shoes were so worn that I could see holes through to the inside. He stood there, twirling that stick in his hand, just looking at me.
“Come on out where we can see you,” the man said. With every word, I could feel his power pushing against me. I couldn’t understand this though. I was cautious to get close to them, and his pack of what were clearly trained Clipasie, so I warped to the top of one of the nearby houses.
Which of them was the Tongue? I was starting to wonder if they even knew how to use the power. Tongues, like Jolin, had had the ability to alter their voice and render the people around them incapable of lying. It put a person in a euphoric state of happiness and once in that state the person was powerless to resist. The power didn’t fully come from the voice though. On occasions, I sometimes could feel Jolin's power slightly, before he even spoke.
When it was Jolin it was a minor, but noticeable, wave of power. Nothing even close to what I felt surround me now. The force could have been coming from either of the two, but why? This man was only talking. He wasn’t asking questions, so why would either of them use the power?
“King Jolin sent me. You can’t have this many Clipasie in one area. The kingdom sees it as a threat. As an army.” I said coldly.
The boy with the man simply spat on the ground and sneered at me He had stopped twirling his stick, and instead was gently tapping it against his leg. The Clipasie, all in one fluid motion turned and looked at the man. What in Keeper’s name was going on here?
“We don’t acknowledge the false king,” the boy finally said. “Do we father?” Oh, so they were father and son? The older man shook his head. “No son, we certainly do not.” The man moved slightly and placed his hands near the fire.
“I must say this has turned out to be a heck of a night. First, the rain stops, and these things start falling from the sky, and then a Warper from the king comes to tell me what to do.” He rubbed his hands together and pointed at me. “Well, I’m tired of listening to these so-called kings. These men with no true power, but the wealth to control the land.” He shook his head at me. “No more.”
As the man spoke, his son simply grinned at me. “Well, I do have power. Real power. It took me years to realize it, but I finally see that I can do more with it besides make people tell me the truth.” So, he was the Tongue after all. He looked at the Clipasie to his right. “Get on your hands and knees,” he said as I felt a wave of power fill the air.
To my surprise, as the man gave the order, music filled the air again. It was coming from his son. I touched that unknown power inside of me, and held it. I could feel it flowing through my body now. For an instant, everything around me became sharp. My senses were amplified now with my own internal power. I narrowed my eyes and focused on the boy.
What I had mistaken for a stick was actually an instrument of some kind. It was slender and small with tiny holes in it. I had never seen anything like it before. In the next second, everything around me returned to normal. My enhanced senses were gone, and I released my power.
As commanded, the Clipasie dropped on all fours, and the deep- voiced man casually sat down on his back. The music suddenly stopped. I could feel my face twist in confusion. “I think the Warper is lost, father.”
“The Keeper was watching over us one day,” the man waved a hand to his son as he spoke and sat on his Clipasie chair. “One day while out here in these very hills, we were crossing the border into Thera, when we came across a group of five Clipasie. As Clipasie, do, they tried to kill us. I had no weapons, and all he had was his flute.
The man must have seen the confusion on my face. “The little stick he uses to play his music,” the man added. It was called a flute? I thought to myself. Flute, bicycle, boat. Why did we have to make such odd names for things?
The man continued to talk, not allowing my confusion to slow him down. “Out of instinct, I used my power to try and talk to them, while he used his music to try to calm them down. I thought if I could get them to answer questions, it would slow them enough for us to escape. I had always been unusually strong for a Tongue and never had trouble using my abilities over a crowd,”
As the man spoke his son dropped to the ground and sat down, leaning back on the palms of his hand as if he were watching for my reaction. “You know what happened then, Warper?” the man asked me. I had already guessed.
Somehow, this Tongue, this oddly powerful Tongue, and his son, were combining their gifts to control the Clipasie. I didn’t answer him, though. I remained silent as I tightened my grip on my dagger. “They didn’t tell us the truth, they didn’t even speak. They simply listened. Not only did they listen but their simple minds seemed at ease with the music, and their anger was kept at bay. With enough power, and music playing, my wish became their command. Lucky for me, as a Tongue, I was
always powerful. Even from an early age.”
He snapped his fingers and his son jumped up and ran to one of the nearby homes. In a few moments, he reappeared with a sword that was as large as he was. He was dragging it by the handles and was moving slowly. I had never seen a sword so large.
“Now return to your king. Tell him to leave us to our own.” He paused and looked at me as if he expected a response, or for me to simply warp away. The man glanced at his son, and then cleared his throat. “Leave now, or you will die. You do understand that, don’t you?”
As the tiny glowing orbs fell, I could feel my throat go dry a little as I swallowed, but I stood on the house and looked back at the pack in front of me. Unflinching and unmoving.
The man shrugged. “Kill him, please,” he said to another Clipasie as the ripple of his Tongue power exploded around me. This time there was no music. Nothing to keep the rage of the brutes in check. A random Clipasie, with purple skin and white hair, grabbed the sword from the boy with ease and charged towards where I was.
He jumped and I reacted. I warped to a neighboring house, turning to the massive purple monster. I touched my power and then warped his gigantic sword away from him. It vanished from his hand one second, and then the next it came crashing down on a random home. The boy and his father seemed taken aback by this as they looked at me. The father even stood up.
The purple Clipasie looked at his now empty hand, searching for his sword that was no longer there. I warped again, this time reappearing behind him. “Behind you,” I screamed as the Clipasie turned around to face me.
As he did so, I drove my dagger directly under his chin into the soft spot Ember had told me about when we faced a Clipasie in The Clarkton. I removed the dagger with a twist as the Clipasie fell and rolled off of the house.
“Father, it’s him. The Warper people are talking about.” His son backed up some now, and dropped his flute on the ground. His surprise and shock, made me feel good.
“Seems I’m not the only powerful one here tonight.” the man said casually as he sat back down. The wave that followed was so strong that it made my knees weak. His powers truly were impressive. The man uttered a single word. “Go.”
The pack of Clipasie screamed all at once and charged at me.
3
Time seemed to slow down for a moment as I watched the herd of Clipasie rushing towards me. In my time of knowing him, Ember was hardly afraid of anything, but I was certain that the site before me would scare even him.
The herd of Clipasie ran as they howled and groaned through the night air. A river of flowing, multicolored, unchecked, primal rage was rapidly headed my way. The man and his son didn’t move, though. Instead, they elected to stand in front of the fire as the raging beasts maneuvered around them. The Clipasie treated them as if they weren’t even there.
Half of the Clipasie had their hands in the air as they ran and screamed, while others brandished knives and clubs that no normal man could carry with such ease. As they got closer, time seemed to return to normal and the Clipasie began to leap into the air. I held onto my dagger that still had blood on it from the first Clipasie I killed moments ago, and I warped.
I reappeared on a nearby house just in time to see three large, orange- skinned Clipasie land on the roof I was standing on only moments ago. Two males and one female, all looking at each other. For a second they seemed confused, then the confusion turned into anger as they began to butt heads and roar at each other.
The unmistakable power of the Tongue, the power that played on what appeared to be a constant pulse, flexed some and for a moment became more intense. Instantly, the bickering Clipasie on the roof stopped and leapt down to the ground and rejoined the rest of the herd.
In that single moment, I knew what I needed to do. As the plan formed in my head, I could hear and feel a crashing down below me. The Clipasie herd had stopped trying to leap on the abandoned house to reach me, instead they took the brute approach, and decided to destroy the house.
Caught off guard, I came crashing down to the ground as the roof beneath me gave way. Debris and dirt filled the air. I could barely breath or see. Dust filled my lungs, making me cough, and my eyes watered slightly.
Large Clipasie feet were all around me, as I covered my face while looking for a place, anyplace to warp to.
Before I could, I felt something solid collide with my back, as the portion of the herd on top of me began to try and pummel me with their hands. Pain rushed through my body like a bolt of lightning, quickly reaching every inch of me. I reached inside myself and took hold of my power.
I knew it was useless, but I tried anyway. I held the power. Not to warp, but to try and heal some of the pain I felt in my body. It helped some, but not enough to allow me to be back to full strength.
I had lost my dagger in the fall and couldn’t uncover my face long enough to look for it. Before I could figure out a plan, something happened. Something that sent my heart into my stomach for a second. A hand, an overpowering, large Clipasie hand grabbed my shoulder and began to clamp down.
The pain and pressure seemed unnatural. How could something be this strong. “Mine,” the voice of the Clipasie came on in a grunt. I still had my face covered, I dare not move my arm shield to look at my captor, but I could assume that whichever one had its hand on me was the one speaking.
I felt myself being lifted off the ground, as easily as a beggar picking up a yolar off of the ground. As the Clipasie held me up, several things happened all at once. First, I dropped my arms and caught a glimpse of what was holding me. Surprisingly it was a female. Judging from how high in the air I was, she must have been easily over ten feet tall, making her one of the largest Clipasie in the immediate area.
I could barely make anything else out because at that very moment, she drew her arm back, the arm I was being held with, and she hurled me into the sky. My body was propelled into the air so powerfully that I could feel, and hear, my cloak flapping around me.
The mysterious blue orbs that were falling were disbursed by my speed, leaving a trail of sorts in my wake. This move, this act of damnation on the female Clipasie’s part, proved to be my means of survival.
As I flew through the air, I spun around to face the herd below me. In doing so, I could see the unknown father and son. Even in my pain, and with a taste of blood in my mouth, I was able to be a little defiant. I shoot a wink in their direction. I was so high up that I’m sure they couldn’t see it, though.
Then I sprang into action. This was no time to only casually touch my power. No, this was a time to grab it and let it explode through my body as if my life depended on it, and in reality, it did. So, that's what I did. In one fluid force of power, I let the unknown inside me enhance my senses. My vision, for a second, became so sharp that I could see the items below me as if I were mere inches away.
My enhanced vision began to fade, and I warped a large portion of debris from the ground and into the air. The chunk of wood from the destroyed house, appeared in the air near me and instantly began to fall. I smiled as I, for the first time, had created a warp point. I warped myself to the falling chunk of wood, and instantly as my feet touched it, my momentum was mine to control again.
No longer was I being thrown through the air, instead I was falling. My plan was risky, but in my mind, I felt it would work. As I fell towards the ground, the herd of Clipasie looked up at me in the sky.
With both hands out I began to warp weapon after weapon from them. In seconds, large clubs and swords, almost identical in size to myself, appeared in the air around me and began to fall towards the onlooking Clipasie below.
Several were impaled by the falling swords, while others were bashed by the end of the large clubs. Finally, it became clear what I was doing, and the Clipasie began to run in various directions to avoid the weapons I had made rain down on them.
Once more I warped a chunk of debris in the air. This time the chunk reappeared higher i
n the sky than I was. Glancing over my shoulder, I used it as a warp point. This added a few more feet to my descent.
Many of the weapons had been dropped by the herd as they ran. I looked around as I fell through the air, and found my target. There he was, still standing by the fire. The man controlling all of this.
He was my way out. Kill the master, and the beast has no choice but to bend to your will or embrace its newly- formed freedom. In this case, since I couldn’t control them, the Clipasie would become free and, in theory, separate and the army would be no more. If that didn’t work, perhaps they would just kill each other. Either way, as far as I was concerned, the result was the same.
The man below, as if he could read my mind or see me looking at him, reacted. A wave of energy expanded from him so forcefully that I could feel it in the air as I came crashing down. What was he doing? I couldn’t figure it out because I wasn’t close enough to see his mouth move.
Suddenly, as if the sky had fallen , I felt what seemed like a mountain collide with me. Not only did it collide with me, but it wrapped around me. A Clipasie had jumped from some unseen spot and snatched me right out of the air.
This Clipasie spun me around in the air, and faced me. His long blue ponytail flapped around his face, as he parted his yellow lips, and spoke. “Clipasie strong. Clipasie jump high.” As he muttered these simple statements, the mixture of its breath and rotting teeth made me feel sick to my stomach. “You die,” he said with a smile.
I fumbled at my belt and reached for one of my throwing knives. I could feel my fingertips brush across the handle but the Clipasie wrapped around me made it hard to move my arm. I couldn’t see it, but I was sure we were almost to the ground now. I wanted to warp away but couldn’t look around enough to find a warp point.
The fall, while it surely would lead to my death, might not even kill this monster holding me. In what proved to be a final move, I dropped my head low, leaned in, and used the back of it to smash it into the lower part of the Clipasie’s chin. It wasn’t much, but I had hit the soft spot hard enough to force the Clipasie to loosen its grip on me.
